Tag Archive | teens

Long-lived lies unravel – THE UNDOING OF THISTLE TATE, #yalit by Katelyn Detweiler (book review)

Jul23
book cover of The Undoing of Thistle Tate, by Katelyn Detweiler. Published by Holiday House | recommended on BooksYALove.com

Deadline time!
Final book manuscript due to her editor now…
but she’s not the author, not by a long shot!

Floundering in his own publishing woes after the car crash that killed Thistle’s mom, her dad puts the homeschooled young teen’s name on his big, big manuscript based on her short, short story – and it’s a hit!

A few years down the road, with the last book of the series almost complete, Thistle can almost see the finish line – no more book tours in ‘Lemonade Skies’ themed outfits, no more questions about ‘her’ plots and ‘her’ characters.

Thankfully, she’s always had neighbor Liam to talk to – best friend and secret-keeper ever, now maybe more…

During an appearance at her hometown Philly bookstore, Thistle is asked by a young man to visit his very ill sister, and she veers off Dad’s script by going to the hospital.

Is she falling for Oliver and his family?
Will Dad meet the deadline for the final book in time?
Why did she ever let all this get started?

Happy book birthday to The Undoing of Thistle Tate ! Ask for it NOW at your local library or independent bookstore.

Ever have a ‘little secret’ burgeon into something uncontrollable?
**kmm

Book info: The Undoing of Thistle Tate / Katelyn Detweiler. Margaret Ferguson Books: Holiday House Books, 2019. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Teen doctor diagnoses SYMPTOMS OF A HEARTBREAK, #YAlit by Sona Charaipotra

Jul16
book cover of Symptoms of a Heartbreak by Sona Charaipotra, published by Imprint/Macmillan | recommended on BooksYALove.com

Graduated from med school at 16,
the youngest doctor in America!
(still no driver license…)

As “Genius Girl” Saira begins her internship in pediatric oncology, she expects to be challenged by medical situations – not a hostile hospital supervisor or or failing the driving test yet again or falling in love with a patient.

Link thought she was another ‘cancer kid’ and doesn’t react well when he finds out she’s actually a doctor on his ward. Maybe he’ll let her help with his music competition online anyway.

Chemo, radiation, bone marrow donation – the terms and realities and after-effects play out among the young patients in the three interns’ caseload. And there are only 2 spots in the residency to follow…

How can she reconcile how the accounting department and medical teams see patients’ cancer treatment options so differently?

If Link’s treatment doesn’t work, how can she deal with being his last love when he is her first?

How will her extended Indian-American family react when they discover that Vish has been her ‘boyfriend’ so long because he’s not ready to come out?

Cancer has touched us all – what are you doing to help?
**kmm

Book info: Symptoms of a Heartbreak / Sona Charaipotra. Imprint (Macmillan), 2019. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

All’s fair in love & baseball?? STEALING HOME, by Becky Wallace (YA book review)

Jul9
book cover of Stealing Home, by Becky Wallace. Published by Page Street | recommended on BooksYALove.com

The players are on the field,
concession stand is busy –
time to play ball!

Ryan lives and breathes her family’s minor league baseball team every summer, planning to become the first female general manager in the league after college.

Young players don’t stay in the minors long on their way up to the Texas Rangers in the big leagues, so Ryan swears she’ll never date one, but there’s something about just- arrived Campbell…

Whoa! Mom wants to sell out her half of the team?! Even though it’s hard work to get sponsors and pay the bills, the 17 year old loves what the team brings to their small Texas town and will find a way to stop this!

Happy book birthday today to Stealing Home!

How hard would you work to save your family’s dream?
**kmm

Book info: Stealing Home / Becky Wallace. Page Street Publishing, 2019. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Death repeats itself – murderous tales to read with your ears!

Jul4

Americans are drawn into deathly peril and ghostly intrigue in England with this week’s pair of free, professionally produced audiobooks from AudioSYNC.

Choose one! Choose both! Just be sure to click on the title below and download before they roll off the free list on Wednesday 10 July 2019.

CD cover of The Name of the Star, by Maureen Johnson, Read by Nicola Barber Published by Brilliance Audio | recommended on BooksYALove.com

The Name of the Star, by Maureen Johnson

Read by Nicola Barber

Published by Brilliance Audio

A Jack the Ripper copycat begins terrorizing London just as Rory arrives at boarding school from her small Louisiana town.

Why is she the only witness who can see the killer?

CD cover of The Canterville Ghost, by Oscar Wilde | Read by Rupert Degas Published by Naxos AudioBooks | recommended on BooksYALove.com

The Canterville Ghost, by Oscar Wilde

Read by Rupert Degas

Published by Naxos AudioBooks

The ghost of Canterville Chase mansion is having little luck in frightening the American family who has moved in.

Time to rattle more chains and start spooking harder!

Any copycat crimes or ghostly encounters in your travels abroad?
**kmm

The link between WILD AND CROOKED surprises everyone, #YAlit by Leah Thomas (book review)

Jun29
book cover of Wild and Crooked, by Leah Thomas. Published by Bloomsbury | recommended on BooksYALove.com

Old scandals have their own life span,
roles of tragic hero and heartless villain already set –
but what if there’s more to the story?

Son of a murdered man, Gus tries to push past cerebral palsy‘s effects on his body and small-town gossip about his moms, but high school is still brutal.

Called back to dad’s hometown after Grandma’s stroke, Kalyn enrolls in school using another name, her dad being a murderer in prison and all that.

Of course, Gus and Kalyn meet and become friendly before they figure out the connection… and that’s just the start of this wild ride of secrets, outright lies, tangled friendships, and squinting at the truth.

Ever befriended someone whose past needs forgetting?
**kmm

Book info: Wild and Crooked / Leah Thomas. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Also by this author: Because You’ll Never Meet Me – no-spoiler recommendation here

How can he love her, the most WICKED FOX? by Kat Cho (YA book review)

Jun25
book cover of Wicked Fox, by Kat Cho. G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers | recommended on BooksYALove.com

An evil man’s soul sucked dry under Seoul’s full moon,
a human teen attacked by a goblin nearby,
who exactly is the new girl at his school?

Jihoon’s carefully cultivated disdain for schoolwork and academic status hides his insecurities about being abandoned to grandmother’s stern and loving care.

New student Miyoung tries to be unremarkable, but her supernatural beauty and strength alert the haters, like at the half-human spirit-fox’s last school.

Only by feeding on the gi life-force of humans can Miyoung and her full-gumiho mother stay immortal – now a detective is finding a pattern in ‘random’ murders during each full moon.

Both fatherless, their mothers distant, feeling so alone in the world… as their paths cross and recross – during full moons and at school – Jihoon and Miyoung start to fall for one another.

But Miyoung uses her greatest secret strength to save Jihoon during an attack which leaves his grandmother in a coma and both teens vulnerable to forces seeking to destroy them!

The legend of the nine-tailed gumiho’s origin threads through this tale of love and sacrifice – Happy #bookbirthday to The Wicked Fox!

How much would you give up to save someone you loved?
**kmm

Book info: Wicked Fox (Gumiho, book 1) / Kat Cho. G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, 2019. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

FOUR THREE TWO ONE…survivor’s guilt may explode, by Courtney Stevens (YA book review)

Jun11
book cover of Four Three Two One, by Courtney Stevens. Published by Harper Teen | recommended on BooksYALove.com

An art installation,
recreating the NYC bus bombing
where they almost died with the others…
almost.
Is almost enough or too much?

A year after an angry white boy explodes himself on a sightseeing bus, the four teen survivors are still trying to piece their lives together:

Golden and Chan – young sweethearts from the same Kentucky commune,
Caroline – from New York wine country, unable to escape vicious Simon,
Rudy – former athlete, now wheelchair-bound in Florida.

A medic who helped them away from the burning bus has spent the past year honoring the victims online and will soon unveil the rebuilt bus with their families’ memories – on the very street where it happened.

He asks people who can’t attend to donate scholarship money for the survivors and invites Golden, Chan, Caroline, and Rudy to be there.

Can they really face that bus where 19 others died?
Can they undo their connections to the bomber’s choice to bomb that bus at that moment?
Can they move forward, alone or together, ever?

Golden’s tennis partner Becky arranges the road trip that will get them all to NYC for the ceremony…ready to remember or not.

How have you worked through being a survivor?
**kmm

Book info: Four Three Two One / Courtney Stevens. Harper Teen, 2018. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

She thought her home is WHERE THE HEART IS, but is it? by Jo Knowles (MG book review)

Jun8
book cover of Where the Heart Is, by Jo Knowles. Published by Candlewick | recommended on BooksYALove.com

Gotta get a job,
help with the bills…
what a 13th birthday surprise!

Rachel and best friend Micah want to have a summer filled with lazy days at the lake, ice cream, and her little sister tagging along.

But money troubles are piling up for Mom and Dad, so she gets a job caring for their new neighbors’ hobby farm animals. Are they really raising that mean ol’ pig for bacon?

Too many things are changing – next year is eighth grade, the Townsends built their big new house on the best winter sledding hill, Micah wants to be her boyfriend… no crushes on boys for her.

Does Cybil want to be more than a casual friend?
Will Mom and Dad ever stop fighting about money?
Will Rachel’s pay as a farm helper be enough?

Rachel’s summer seems more like a raging river of worries than their favorite calm lakeshore beach as she tries to navigate around so many new obstacles.

Read the first chapters here free, courtesy of the publisher, to meet Rachel and family on her big birthday.

Is home really “where the heart is”?
**kmm

Book info: Where the Heart Is / Jo Knowles. Candlewick Press, 2019. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.

Shh… don’t tell anyone else, but I heard…audiobooks!

Jun6

Gossip can taint a relationship, sever a friendship, end someone’s freedom… or their life!

This week’s two free @AudioSYNC audiobooks are filled with gossip and its consequences, free for you to download (just click the title below) and read with your ears.

It’s true that you can keep any free AudioSYNC title on your device as long as you wish, but I wouldn’t trust any of the stories told by characters in these two books!

CD cover of A Girl Like That, by Tanaz Bhathena | Read by Firdous Bamji, Neil Shah, Soneela Nankani, Lameece Issaq.Published by Recorded Books | recommended on BooksYALove.com

A Girl Like That, by Tanaz Bhathena

Read by Firdous Bamji, Neil Shah, Soneela Nankani, Lameece Issaq

Published by Recorded Books

How is it that Porus and Zarin were together unchaperoned in a car? How did the deadly crash happen? Were the school gossips right about Zarin and her flings, forbidden under Saudi law?

Four narrators tell the tale in flashbacks as the ghosts of Porus and Zarin watch the Saudi religious police investigation and its effects on their families and friends.

CD cover of An Enemy of the People, by Henrik Ibsen, Rebecca Lenkiewicz | Read by Rosalind Ayres, Gregory Harrison, Richard Kind, Alan Mandell, Jon Matthews, Alan Shearman, Josh Stamberg, Emily Swallow, Tom Virtue, Sam Boeck, Julia Coulter, Jeff Gardner, William Hickman, Adam Mondschein Published by L.A. Theatre Works | recommended on BooksYALove.com

An Enemy of the People, by Henrik Ibsen, Rebecca Lenkiewicz

Read by Rosalind Ayres, Gregory Harrison, Richard Kind, Alan Mandell, Jon Matthews, Alan Shearman, Josh Stamberg, Emily Swallow, Tom Virtue, Sam Boeck, Julia Coulter, Jeff Gardner, William Hickman, Adam Mondschein

Published by L.A. Theatre Works

Their town thrives because people come for the healing spring waters, and everything is fine.

Except the possibility that the springs are dangerously polluted and the person who wants to make that news public!

Can such devastating news be allowed? If he cannot speak out, then there is no news…
When does the public good become more important than profits? When, indeed!

How have gossip and silenced truths affected you?
**kmm

Home= empty, camp =more, NO PLACE LIKE HERE, by Christina June (YA book review)

Jun4
book cover of No Place Like Here, by Christina June. Published by BlinkYABooks | recommended on BooksYALove.com

Dad’s lies catch up with him,
Mom’s depression is so deep,
what’s the appropriate quotation for this?

No summer with friends for Ashlyn after being unfairly sent to boarding school last year for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time!

While Dad is in prison for tax evasion and Mom’s taking spa treatments to cope, Ash has to work at summer camp with the cousin she hasn’t seen since they were little kids.

Actually it’s a retreat center in the Pennsylvania woods, worlds away from her DC suburb… who knows what she’ll be doing or how her rarely-visited family will treat her.

Her aunt and uncle welcome her warmly, cousin Hannah will show her everything at the center, and surely summer will pass smoothly so Ashlyn’s parents will let her transfer home for her senior year.

Of course the newest employee gets the most boring jobs (sports equipment checkout for family reunion? yawn), but even she can tell that the recently hired director isn’t keeping up with essentials.

Flirting with lifeguard Marcus and ziplining with Baxter are definite high points; visiting Dad in prison isn’t.

Will the camp owner listen to Ashlyn’s concerns about the director?
When will Dad’s stern voice stop invading her thoughts?

We met Ashlyn last summer in It Started With Goodbye (my no-spoiler recommendation here) as she and best friend Tatum made small choices with big consequences – now see what’s next (like this same summer for T’s stepsister recounted in Everywhere You Want To Be (more here)).

How have you turned a bad situation into a better one?
**kmm

Book info: No Place Like Here / Christina June. Blink YA Books, 2019. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.